


Red

by theyreburningthewhales



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: And dishonored, oh well, probably inaccurate facts about daud
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:49:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22242877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theyreburningthewhales/pseuds/theyreburningthewhales
Summary: I couldn't sleep last night but I had some thoughts about Daud
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14





	Red

Daud, despite all evidence to the contrary, was a simple man.

He liked mostly to be left alone. He liked cheap whiskey. He liked a sharp sword.

He liked to cloak himself in red, like blood.

It was a color that was bound to stand out in a place like Dunwall. Like Daud himself, it just didn’t fit, despite him having been a native of Gristol and of Dunwall. People tended to notice him here. It didn’t behoove an assassin to have his name familiar on the locals’ tongues and his face known, plastered on every available surface along with promises of reward for any information regarding the Knife of Dunwall, but there wasn’t much to do about it now. Killing an empress certainly hadn’t helped matters.

It was a good thing Daud was no longer in the business of dealing death. Fame didn’t dull his blade, but it made it much harder to sneak into places he otherwise would have been able to simply walk right into. The aristocracy’s penchant for drama and masquerades aside, perhaps a change of career was for the best.

Of course, his change of heart didn’t stop the watch from posting the wanted posters, nor the announcements by loudspeaker calling for his and his whalers’ immediate detainment and death.

It might have saved his life, though, from the Lord Protector.

Now there was a man who fit in better than he ever could, with his beautifully tailored dark coat—a present from the empress, his lover, and what more proof could one need that the man had slotted into Dunwall like a puzzle piece that was always meant to be there?

Corvo Attano was everything the city was: quiet, grim, and hiding deep shadows beneath silk and finery, wherein lie underneath blood on cobblestones and brutal fistfights in dark alleyways, plague and rats and witch hunts, and death that came faster than a snap of the fingers.

Despite his foreign blood, his dark skin and crow black hair, Corvo prowled the streets and rooftops like they were made for him and him alone. He was quick and sure-footed, adorned in Gristol golds and an intense navy that looked only more rich and beautiful against the backdrop of stone and cold grays as he perched high above the streets, quiet and serious and dark as his namesake, and just as deadly to the rats that plagued Dunwall’s aristocracy.

_A murder, indeed._

Corvo was a concealed blade, a poisoned drink: quietly and subtly dangerous, and not to be underestimated.

Not like Daud, who brazenly wore the crimson of fresh spilled blood on his coat, on his hands, on his soul. His whalers he kept in Gristol greys and blues, which helped them vanish into the mists of the early mornings and lazy evenings as surely as they vanished from thin air with a flex of their hands.

Daud, on the other hand, was murder; he was tainted, dripping red and always would be. There was no point in pretending to be anything other than what he was, so he didn’t. He wore it instead, quite literally, on his sleeve, the color vivid and ostentatious in a way that would have marked him foreign were it not for his pale skin and rough, candid pattern of speech.

Daud sank down into a crouch, fingertips of one gloved hand carefully splayed on the concrete to keep the weight off of his ankles. It was an old habit, one learned from a handful of negative experiences, the kind that left their marks as both scars and memories. If he needed to move suddenly and with any kind of dexterity, he’d rather not pull something doing it and spend the rest of his day struggling through the hell of a strained muscle when almost all of his work required careful balance and nigh flawless body control.

Better to get as comfortable as was safe. He’d likely be in this position for a while, anyway.

Or perhaps not. With a whisper of the void and a soft breeze someone appeared in the few feet of empty space beside him, dissolving from nothing into something with barely a breath of sound. They stilled and balanced themselves expertly on their shared perch, not even jostling or brushing against him at all.

They had stuck the landing, which was always the hardest part of learning to Blink.

Good—it meant his recruits were learning. In time, they might even surpass him.

“Nobody inside, sir.” They said lowly beneath their mask, and Daud recognized their voice instantly as belonging to Anya, indeed a new recruit.

Anya herself was bright and strong-willed; dark-eyed and definitely from Gristol, though the patch of white in her hair and covering half of her face had thrown him the first time they’d met. It was a birthmark, she’d said, and Daud hadn’t asked more about it. The whaler uniform and their masks concealed all of the differences that otherwise would have made her memorable to a particularly alert city guard. He’d made a note not to send her out unmasked and moved on.

He was glad he had, too. She was quick and smart, light on her feet and quiet as an abbey mouse when she wanted to be. She’d have made a formidable assassin, were the whalers still in the business of dealing death.

“And the safe?”

“In the basement, it has to be. I’d have scoped it out myself, but given everything, I figured I’d get your go ahead first, sir.”

The safe wasn’t on any of the upper floors, then. It was something he could have confirmed himself, much less dangerously and much quieter, but he needed to let his men handle their fair share of the load when it came to things like this. If he couldn’t trust them, there was no point to any of this.

He confirmed her words by flicking on his second sight for a brief moment, then nodded, blinking it away and ignoring the familiar tug of the void, the soft whispers.

“If you think you’re prepared.” He nodded to her. “Signal the others and take your time.” He emphasized the last part, calling to mind mistakes and raised alarms. “Don’t get impatient.”

Her shoulders set, but he could hear the grin in her voice. “Contrary to what Rulfio might say, sir, I can be taught.”

Daud scoffed and waved her away, because they both knew full well that Rulfio often dished out just a little too much praise.

Anya vanished without a sound, disappearing into the humid twilight, the setting sun making the air hazy with fading light and masking her departure. It was tactically wise; anyone looking for her from the manor would be blinded by the sun and most likely miss her silhouette entirely. 

He’d let her choose everything, from the timing to her squad to her method. He’d noticed a fair handful of minor mistakes, but those were to be expected. Thus far, he was suitably impressed with her progress.

Another whaler appeared in her place a few minutes later.

“How’s she doing?” Daud asked.

“Fine. She went in through the library window but I don’t think she’s hit the first set of traps yet.” Thomas informed him.

“And the hounds in the foyer?”

“Rulfio’s idea. Said she didn’t always handle surprises well.”

“It’ll be a surprise, for sure.” He agreed. Daud liked animals, but he absolutely loathed the fine bred hounds that the upper nobility trended to keep around for protection. Stupid, biting, _noisy_ animals that could ruin months of careful planning and scouting just by being in the wrong spot at the worst time.

Anya was good at scouting and a fair hand at Blinking, but she’d never managed the second sight that only about a fifth of Daud’s chosen were able to awaken. The hounds were likely to catch her completely off guard. “You think she’ll succeed?”

“She still has a good chance as long as she doesn’t set off the—"

There was a rush of air, a tremendous boom, and a shattering of glass, a breathless silence, then the sounds of barking and snarling dogs.

“She okay?” Thomas asked mildly.

Daud was tracking her progress through the walls, a flash of gold as the world around him faded into dark blues. “She’s still on her feet.”

“She’s not ready.” Thomas asserted decisively. “She’s still too reckless.”

Daud took a second to think it over. “They always are.” He pointed out. “At first. She’ll grow out of it.”

“When? Before or after she gets ki—”

Anya appeared next to him then in a puff of void magic, panting as her grey uniform, now blackened with soot, still smoked in places. “Got it,” she said, proud even as she caught her breath, holding up a long, black box. “I got it.”

Daud took it from her after a heavy pause, raising a meaningful eyebrow at Thomas.

Thomas grunted, folding his arms. “Not the way I’d have done it, but results are results. You’re alive and unharmed, no one was killed, and you’ve accomplished your mission. A success, by the skin of your teeth.”

“Well done,” Daud agreed quietly, and her head snapped up. Beneath the lenses of her mask he could see her eyes were wide and shiny.

Daud grinned at her then, carefully popping open the box she’d worked so hard to retrieve and withdrawing a cigar.

Daud had recently discovered he liked the sour spice of serkonan cigars. They helped chase away the metallic tang of blood and the city’s natural reek.

Dunwall was coastal; Gristol an island. The ocean salt seemed to cling to everything here; it lent the city a musty, cool smell that was less like a fresh ocean breeze in most parts and more like a tide pool long forgotten and abandoned by the waves: thick and heavy with saline and the sour decay of ocean creatures exposed to open air and left to rot. It was a taste he’d rather get out of his mouth whenever possible; thus the cigars.

“Thomas, would you like one?”

Thomas waved a hand dismissively. “Dr. Galvanni says those are bad for you.”

“Dr. Galvanni can go fuck a rat.” Daud answered breezily, pointedly ignoring the way Anya was straightening up in realization.

“All that for a cigar box?” She demanded, snatching it from his hands to turn it over and examine it.

He let her get away with it, if only because he admired her boldness. “You can’t have one until you’re eighteen.” He informed her, but he let her have her “prize.”

“You absolute mother fu—” she blinked, suddenly remembering who she was talking to as the adrenaline in her blood started to drain away. “Uh—I mean…”

Thomas bit out a laugh.

“This was a test, wasn’t it?” Anya said, sheepish now. “…did I pass?”

Over her shoulder, the Knife of Dunwall gave his second a subtle tilt of the head.

Thomas patted her on the shoulder. “Come on, whaler. Let’s bolt before the fire draws attention.”

Her eyes gleamed before she hesitated. “What about the manor?”

“The owners caught the plague months ago. It’s abandoned.”

“The dogs?”

Thomas pointed, and she followed his gaze to see another whaler in blue leading the hounds out the front door. “They’ll be fine. Rulfio has them. Go. I’ll catch up with you in a second.”

She obeyed without hesitation, vanishing as she Blinked away. She reappeared two seconds later to hand the cigar box back to him, embarrassment obvious in her posture, before she flickered away again.

Thomas sighed. “Daud, she...”

“She’ll be fine. It’ll be a while before she’s working on her own anyway, Thomas, you know that.”

“You’re too easy on them.”

Daud gave him a withering look and Thomas winced as though realizing how stupid that sentence actually was, but he didn’t back down. “You can’t tell me that was a satisfactory performance.”

“It wasn’t.” Daud agreed. “But she’s getting restless and we’re low on men. I need the extra hands on patrol so I can free up a few others to actually go after Delilah’s coven. She knows she can improve. I didn’t okay her performance, I okayed her judgment and potential.”

“Which won’t mean anything when someone puts a gun to her head.”

“I know.” Daud sighed, flexing his marked hand and letting the glow of the void warm him to his toes. “We’ll just have to do what we’ve always done.”

Thomas snorted. “Sneak real quiet and pray we aren’t caught? Watch each other’s backs and hope for the best?”

“Exactly that.” Daud agreed, a sigh on his lips so weary and drawn that Thomas felt his amusement flicker and die. Daud Blinked away, vanishing into the night, and Thomas followed, leaving behind the now smoking abandoned manor and the indignant caws of the crows as the fire burned steadily higher.


End file.
